What do you do if you find a bug in an extremely popular web service run by arguably the most important online company on the planet? You try to report it, right? Well if the problem is with Google Reader, like mine is, good freakin' luck.

I currently have a feed stuck in my Google Reader account that refuses to unsubscribe when I try to do so. Here's the kicker - the feed is one that is generated by Google Reader's own "link blog" feature, whereby you can publish a shared feed of posts you find interesting. As a good little boy, I attempted to email the Google Reader team using the link they provide in Google Reader. Almost immediately I received a form letter reply from the Google Reader team that told me where to go and how to get there. Here's what the email said:

Thank you for your interest in Google Reader. We are currently focusing all of our energy on developing this feature and other Google Labs prototypes. Due to this fact, we are unable to provide personal responses to the email we receive. However, we are monitoring all of your feedback and suggestions and will keep them in mind as we work to improve Google Reader.

To further assist our users, we have created a discussion forum on Google Groups where you can exchange information with other Google Reader users. You can access the news group at:

http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Labs-Reader

We encourage you to post your email to this forum and join other Google Reader users in sharing your thoughts and expertise.

Thanks again for your feedback and for using Google Reader.

Regards,
The Google Team

Now, that's all fine and dandy, but a quick search of the Google Reader discussion forum revealed that I'm not the only one suffering this problem. It is, in fact, a bug. Worse, there has yet to be a response from the Reader team on this issue. And I'm not the only one to notice that Google's track record with dealing with bug reports stinks - check out this post by Garett Rogers over at ZDNet's Googling Google blog, entitled "Find a bug? Don't bother reporting it."

Update: Just before publishing this post, I did another search of the Google Reader Forum, and found a post in this thread claiming that a fix to this problem was pushed out today. Unfortunately, it does not appear to have worked for me, or for many other users. At least it's nice to see that they're paying attention. Let's hope it gets resolved soon...